The U.S. Pat. No. 4,450,352 discloses an electric control arrangement which is intended for use with object detecting systems for counting newspapers orientated in fishscale formation. This prior known system includes a light source in the form of a laser beam, two receiver units which receive light reflected from the object, and electrical or electronic devices for evaluating and detecting the presence of separate newspapers in accordance with variations in the received reflected light beams, therewith counting the number of newspapers that pass through the object detecting system.
The arrangement illustrated and described in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,217,491 also forms part of the known prior art, this known arrangement comprising an electro-optical device which is positioned above a stream of transported units or objects, in order to detect the passage of each unit, by projecting a light beam onto the units and measuring the reflection of the light beams at two mutually different angles.